It's Official: 'Avatar' Is the Most Pirated Movie of All Time

It’s Official: ‘Avatar’ Is the Most Pirated Movie of All Time

James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ tops TorrentFreak’s top 10 list of most pirated movies ever.

-Lucia Peters

Digital piracy has been rampant pretty much since the advent of the Internet, and no matter how hard Hollywood and the music industry try to control it, it just keeps getting worse. And guess what film is the most pirated in Hollywood history? Well, according to a study released by TorrentFreak, James Cameron’s Avatar takes the top honor: It’s been downloaded 21 million times since it was released in 2009.

Does anyone else find this weird?

Maybe this is just me, but hear me out: Avatar is one of the few 3D films in recent memory that actually benefited from the extra dimension. That’s right: the 3D aspect made it a better movie. Why? Because in all honesty, Avatar’s story wasn’t that original or ground-breaking (that’s why The Hurt Locker won the Oscar for Best Picture that year). Maybe I’m dating myself here, but essentially it was Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest, which was by no means a great cinematic achievement. But the world of the film—now that’s something else.. The world created in Avatar was so astonishingly complex as to be completely mind-blowing. Make that world 3D, and well… you get the picture.

So here’s the thing: Unless you happen to have one of those new-fangled 3D televisions (unlikely), odds are, you’re not downloading the 3D release. So I ask you: Is Avatar really good enough on its own to warrant quite this much downloading?